Next to Die (42 page)

‘You won’t get that lucky, even if you get out of here. You think you know about grown-up stuff, because I’ve seen the messages you sent to Billy.’

Ruby flinched as Carrie moved loose strands of hair that had fallen over her face. It wasn’t meant to be caring, Ruby knew that. It was supposed to let Ruby know that she was powerless, that Carrie could do what she wanted.

‘But you don’t really know,’ Carrie continued, her voice soft, but spoken with a quiet threat. ‘You pretend that you do, but that was all stuff you’ve picked up from the internet and books. It’s not the same as the real thing, because you don’t get that bond, something so deep that you will do anything for them. And I mean anything. Not just the dirty promises you made, even though we both know that you wouldn’t have done any of it, because it was just fantasy. What I have felt is something beyond the reach of most people.’

‘What, with Ronnie?’

Carrie laughed. ‘No, not with him. He’s just a stop-gap, someone to help me get what I want.’

‘I can’t talk with the blindfold on, because I’m scared,’ Ruby said. ‘Just pull it down, please, just so I can see.’

There was a pause, and then Ruby felt hands on her head. The blindfold was pulled down.

Ruby blinked. She was finally able to get a proper look at Carrie. She would have been pretty once, but looked like she had gone skinny and didn’t wear it well. Her cheekbones were prominent, her eyes wide and tired-looking, with dark rings and tight skin. Her lips were pressed tightly together, the tension pulling lines around her mouth.

‘Thank you,’ Ruby said.

‘So what do you want to say?’ Carrie said.

‘I don’t know,’ Ruby said, sniffling. ‘I just want to know more. Why me?’

Carrie tilted her head, and then she grinned. ‘So you think it’s all about you?’ A laugh. ‘It’s not about you. It has never been about you, little Ruby.’

‘So tell me, I don’t understand. I don’t want to be here, because I’m cold and I’m scared, and now it’s not even about me.’

Carrie reached forward and stroked Ruby’s hair. ‘Is there anyone you would do anything for? Your brothers? A friend? Your mother? Or is everything about you, little Ruby, baby of the family?’ Carrie shook her head. ‘No, probably not, but that’s where we’re different.’

‘How are we different? Teach me.’

‘You’ve got promise, Ruby. You know how to manipulate. But that’s not going to work with me, because I know the tricks. Nice try, though.’

Ruby looked up as Ronnie came back into the building, holding a length of tow rope.

Carrie stood up. ‘Tie her tighter this time,’ she said. ‘I’m going back outside. It’s nearly time for the next train.’

Ruby watched as Carrie walked away, disappearing into the dark mouth of the stairwell, her footsteps fading until she knew that it was just her and Ronnie. She tried a smile, although it was hard. ‘Don’t tie me, Ronnie, please. I won’t run away. I’m cold and my arms hurt.’

He shook his head. ‘I have to. Carrie said.’

‘She told me that she doesn’t love you,’ Ruby said. And then in a whisper, ‘All of this is for someone else. Not you.’

‘Do you think I don’t know that? But I love her, and that’s all that matters. You’re the last one. Then we go.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Run away, where no one will find us.’ He wrapped the rope around Ruby’s wrists.

‘What, like the last plan, when you were supposed to be her killer so that she could run away?’

As he yanked on the rope, making Ruby cry out, her wrists bound together tightly, he said, ‘See this hand?’ He showed Ruby his right hand, the small lines tattooed between his thumb and finger. ‘Six of them. One for each of them. But I’ve more to put on, and soon there’ll be another line. For you.’

Ruby’s breath quickened and tears ran onto her cheeks. ‘Please don’t do it,’ she said, her voice breaking, her attempts to get Ronnie on her side coming to nothing.

He pushed Ruby to the floor. She was on her side, her hands bound behind her back. Ronnie pulled the blindfold back down.

She tried to work out where he was, where the next threat was coming from, but all she could hear was the steady rhythm of his breaths.

He was watching her, and she wondered if the blackness ahead would be her last view of life.

Seventy-One

Sam turned to the watch the train speed into the distance and then looked back to the street below. He had seen a light, he knew it.

There were footsteps behind him. The two traffic cops.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ the taller one screamed at him.

Sam didn’t answer. He knew what he had thought of doing and it scared him. The closeness of the train, but just the hint of a distant light had made him pull back.

His phone rang. Withheld number. Sam turned away to answer. It was her.

‘You didn’t jump,’ she said, her voice hostile. ‘You’re running out of time.’

He stepped further away from the transport cops. ‘Yes, it wasn’t the right time. You haven’t given me enough assurances about Ruby.’

‘Ruby will die. Take that as an assurance. You haven’t got time to be so demanding. You had thirty minutes. That’s always the time limit. All the others died.’

Sam took a deep breath, panic welling in his chest. ‘But why would you do that? It’s me you want.’

‘So fucking jump!’

‘It’s a tough thing to do,’ he said, his voice rising. ‘I’ve got children. Responsibilities.’

‘What about the life you can give to your baby sister?’

‘You bitch. You evil fucking bitch!’ Passengers on the platform looked over at him and then turned away when he caught their gaze. The smaller transport cop put his hand on Sam’s arm but Sam yanked it away. He cupped his mouth around the mouthpiece. ‘If you hurt her, I will come after you.’

‘No you won’t, because all you will feel is guilt. Cowardly Samuel Parker. He does everything right. Nice wife. Two lovely little blonde girls.’

Sam felt the colour drain from his face. It felt like he was standing in water. ‘You leave my girls out of this.’

‘Why should I? We’re not negotiating. And maybe I won’t stop at Ruby. I might just keep on going until all that’s left is you. Cowardly Sam. Wrapped up in remorse and guilt. You’ll have no life. You might as well go now.’

‘Why are you doing this?’

There was a pause, and then there was more snap to her voice when she said, ‘Because when you take something so special from someone, you get it back. It’s the great rebalance.’

Sam scoured the street below as she talked, looking for the same light, unsure if it had been just a reflection from streetlights. But it might have been her phone. He kept his head down but used his eyes to scan the area below the platform. Then he saw it, just a faint glow. He was right. A phone in the darkness lighting up someone’s face.

‘Who are those two in green with you?’ she said.

‘Transport cops,’ he said, as he looked back along the platform. Sam was walking away from them, and he could hear them on their radios.

‘I told you to be on your own.’

‘When I look like I’m about to jump from the platform, don’t you think they’d be interested?’

‘The next train is four minutes away. You need to be under it. If you’re not, Ruby will be dead in five minutes, and then I work my way through your family.’

‘You said thirty minutes. There’s ten left.’

‘You didn’t jump. That incurs a penalty. And Ruby’s cold. She wants to go home. You can do that.’

‘Wait, don’t go!’ Sam shouted. ‘Who are you? At least let me die knowing the answers.’

A laugh. ‘You know who I am.’

He closed his eyes. He did.

‘Carrie.’ He stepped towards the edge of the platform. As he looked, he could see the glow of her phone lighting up the shadows.

‘Well done, Detective,’ she said. ‘You would have showed promise.’

‘Why are you back with Ronnie? I don’t understand. He must be violent towards you.’

She laughed. ‘He’s not violent. He’s never hit me.’

‘But the blood?’

‘I know you’re playing for time, but you won’t stop the train.’

When Sam didn’t respond, she said, ‘The problem with people like you is that you don’t see the creativity. The blood was a plant. Draw some out with a syringe, squirt it on a wall and then smear it. It was his idea, to make you think he had killed me, so that you would believe him when he said he had done it, bursting into the station. We knew you’d get all excited and only see one thing.’ There was a sigh, and then, ‘It was his silly idea. The one thing I did for him. He thought that if he made it look like he’d killed me, I would run away and stop serving my beautiful Ben.’

‘So these murders, these young women, they were your idea, to please Ben Grant?’

‘You’ve locked him in a prison but I can keep him free.’

‘But you were going to stop, because you were going to disappear.’

‘No I wasn’t. I was just going to leave Ronnie. He made it perfect, because then everyone would think I was dead. Who’s going to look for a dead woman?’

‘But your darling Ben wasn’t happy about it,’ Sam said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Don’t you know? He tried to give you up this week.’

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Sam was trying to distract her, to prolong it, just to somehow hope that it would put off whatever they had planned for Ruby.

‘Ben wouldn’t do that,’ she said, and Sam detected a rise in her voice, some of the gloating replaced by anger.

‘He did exactly that, because you betrayed him, and he did it the cowardly way, by giving me clues that would lead me to Ronnie, but once we got to Ronnie, we got to you. You brought his games to an end, you see, by letting Ronnie do what he did, handing himself in to let you get away, because if you go, he thinks you’re leaving everyone behind. This new start didn’t involve Ben, he knew that, because you made sure his accomplice was locked up, until my brother freed him. Is that why you’ve carried on, because Ronnie is free?’

She started to laugh, loud and shrill, and he could hear it echoing from where she was. ‘You think Ronnie was Ben’s accomplice?’ Another laugh. ‘I was in the bushes back then, Sam, not Ronnie.’

Sam’s mouth dropped open. ‘You?’

‘Yes, me. I watched how you took him, my darling Ben. We were doing special things and you took it all away from me. Cast your mind back, Sam, because I can remember it as clear as yesterday, because I play it in my mind all the time. The night you took Ben from me, I was watching you, Sam, and you were a coward then, your little torch trembling, scared that Ben was going to jump up and hit you.’

Sam didn’t respond. Instead, he thought back eight years. The rustle of the leaves. The light footsteps.

‘Ben did that for me,’ she continued. ‘He gave himself up so that I could go. That is why Ben would never give me up.’

‘He thought you’d betrayed him.’

‘No, he would have realised soon, when I wrote to him. Then I could serve him again. Ben did it for me. Ronnie tried to do it for me, until your brother did his work and set him free. You need to do that for Ruby. If you love her as your sister, you would do it. But you won’t, because deep love is something you wouldn’t understand.’

‘Understand?’ Sam said, incredulous, angry. ‘Don’t try to make it a romantic thing, Bonnie and Clyde. Ben Grant has all the power. You have none. And if he loved you, as deeply as you think he does, he would let you go. That is love, that is sacrifice.’

‘I saw him sacrifice himself, back when you arrested him.’

‘And how far did that get him? Locked up in a cell as you sleep with someone else, have his child, and then prepare to run away? And you wonder whether he was angry with you?’

There was silence on the other end of the phone, and then she barked the words, ‘Just jump, to save Ruby,’ and hung up, leaving Sam looking at his handset, his hands trembling. He looked to where he had seen the glow but it had gone.

He jumped, startled, when his phone rang again. It was Joe.

‘Joe! Have you found anything out?’

‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you. How long have we got?’

Sam looked at the departures board. ‘Two minutes.’

‘Try Mayfield station,’ Joe said. ‘They might be there. We’re on our way.’

Sam turned round to the transport cops. ‘Where’s Mayfield station?’

One of them pointed to the dark space where Sam had seen the glow. ‘Right there,’ he said. ‘The line to Eccles used to run through it. No trains for sixty years now. We have to go in there sometimes to clear out the tramps.’

Sam looked. It was dark, foreboding, as if a blanket had smothered the streetlights and brightness of the surrounding buildings. But there was something else too that hadn’t been there before. Flickers of light, flashing beams in a black space, a void that the city lights didn’t quite reach.

A tannoy announcement broke his thoughts. The next train was due. Sam focused on the building. Now he knew what it was, he could see the shape of the roof. Long ridges, broken in places, and the streetlights picked out where the windows used to be. The more he looked, the more he could see it for what it was. Mayfield station. Dormant for longer than he had been alive, just a shadow behind the bright lights, empty, a void where nothing passed through anymore. No trains. No people.

Then he saw lights. Beams crossing through gaps in the roof. Two people with torches. There was someone there now.

Sam put the phone back to his ear. ‘You’re right. That’s where they are. I saw her. She can see me too, but I don’t think she knows I’ve spotted her.’

‘We’re not far away.’

‘You’ve haven’t got time.’

Silence for a few seconds, and then, ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’

Sam didn’t answer.

There was a commotion behind him. Sam looked. It was DI Evans running along the platform, her identification out, two other detectives behind her, more out of shape, panting.

‘She’s at Mayfield station!’ Sam shouted, moving towards them. Evans looked. She must have seen the torch beams because she raised her hand and pointed back along the platform.

Sam went to follow her, but she barked, ‘No, you’re too involved. Stay here.’